Full Mental Jacket: Finding Your Ideal Touring Shell
Conquering the Quest for a New Piece of Kit
Pulling the trigger on a new jacket can feel like a daunting mission to gear newbies and veterans alike. Maybe you’re new to ski touring and looking for your first, truly “bomber” shell, or you’re a old pro upgrading from your withering old shell jacket. Either way, the options are seemingly endless. To add to this needle-in-a-stack-of-needles feeling, these days, even the cheapest technical jackets offer a surprisingly high level of protection matched with well thought-out features.
Dave Kelly touring in the Utah backcountry, photo: Austin Holt
Fear not, though; I recently embarked on a quest to find exactly the right hardshell jacket for my own personal touring needs, and here I explain, step by step, what I learned about narrowing down the options. Read More …
Zen and the Art of Managing Powder Panic
By: JGW | December 30th, 20104 Comments »
Every region of the skiing world has its own particular form of this terrible ailment or morning malaise … a rapacious brooding that turns happy citizens into gorilla-chest-pounding, car-horn-honking, Ben-Hur-on-the-traverse fiends. This sanctimonious demon’s name: powder-induced panic. Let me elucidate a specific example …
Salt Lake City’s proximity to habit-forming ski terrain is, like almost anything during this merry-go-round around the Sun, both a boon and bane. Yes, friends, just like Peter Parker’s uncle once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” If you haven’t experienced how empowering 24 inches of Wasatch-density awesomeness can be, then maybe it’s time you took a trip.
But let’s not forget what Lord Acton said: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Salt Lake is within short driving distance of more than ten ski and riding resorts—and the greater-Wasatch-front sprawl boasts more than 2 million citizens. Consider the cumulated monster cloud of psychic anxiety that collects over this salty front each morning fresh snow has fallen … it’s like Ray’s incarnation of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man to the Nth degree. Seriously, people WILL lose their shit.
Allow me to offer some suggestions to help you harness this power (and be responsible) without letting it overcome you: Read More …
Tags: resorts, skiing, snowboarding
Posted in Commentary, How To |